Put your finger on your head and say red backwards

Eejit features here failed to go to the opening of the new Guggenheim exhibition on Spanish art. Quite why, I'm not sure. It involved the making of a chocolate cake, going to a birthday party, and yet, and yet... why?

Still, this week has been an intriguing one. Saw Catherine Mackinnon speak at Columbia - provocative and interesting, and I definitely want her new book on gender and international law. My instinct is that I generally agree with her, and she's a wonderful speaker - passionate, erudite - but that there leaves a problem of women never having any agency in that which they choose to do, which always troubles me. How does a powerful female academic fit into this scheme? all interesting questions...

Tonight is the Lidell at Webster Hall - am very very very overexcited.

And tomorrow, Casino Royale. Yipppppeeee!

It also turns out that while I'm crap at wine club, I'm pretty good at beer club. Go British genes!

I have also managed to lose a book that I was really enjoying reading, so I must grab that back. It's trashy, but I am really enjoying Quicksilver because I find the Restoration utterly fascinating and given that natural philosophers could hold prominent positions in society I am a sucker for anything vaguely mentioned Boyle or Newton... Also amusing because the other half and I were buying books for each other and both wanted to choose this one, but I chose not to because thought he might pick it up for me, which he did. That's not amusing at all, is it? Just twee.

I am also very very very overexcited because it's Thanksgiving this week, which I love - all the best bits of Christmas, i.e. stuffing yourself silly and drinking and being with people you love. Sadly not my family, but my substitute - the folk here that I've known for a very long time and love dearly. Made even better by random appearance of another old friend... It's great. A friend's friend died recently - at a very young age - and... it's just not on your radar that someone our age could die. Yes, of course it happens. But it's still enough of a rarity that I don't personally know anyone my age who has died. So it's time to appreciate just how bloody brilliant my friends are (a la Trent today) and therefore get monstrously full with them all. Huzzah!